I read this address from Elder Eyering, one of the Apostles, and it stirred within me a desire to be better and draw closer to God.

The Message: Coming unto Christ

He speaks of the impulse we find ourselves to reach upward toward God:

That pull upward is far beyond what you would call a desire for self-improvement. When I felt it, I knew I was being urged to live so far above myself that I could never do it on my own. President McKay had it right. You feel an urging to rise above your natural self. What you have felt is an urging from your Heavenly Father to accept this invitation:

“Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

“And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot” (Moroni 10:32–33).

That urge to rise above yourself is a recognition of your need for the Atonement to work in your life, and your need to be sure that it is working. After all you can do, after all your effort, you need confidence that the Atonement is working for you and on you.

In the Book of Mormon, the greatest threat to peace and prosperity is not an external enemy-- it is the enemy within the heart, the desire to disobey the commandments of God. This disobedience is what led the people to a state of weakness and vulnerability to the enemies that encroached upon them as is common in any age of the world.

If the people were faithful, they were regularly delivered. Here are soaring words of praise (3 Nephi 4:30-33)--

  30 And they did rejoice and cry again with one voice, saying: May the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, protect this people in righteousness, so long as they shall call on the name of their God for protection.

  31 And it came to pass that they did break forth, all as one, in singing, and praising their God for the great thing which he had done for them, in preserving them from falling into the hands of their enemies.

  32 Yea, they did cry: Hosanna to the Most High God. And they did cry: Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty, the Most High God.

  33 And their hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; and they knew it was because of their repentance and their humility that they had been delivered from an everlasting destruction.

This weekend I spent a couple of days with the boy scouts at a Camporee. I am the Scoutmaster for our troop, and it is a great responsibility. At the closing ceremony for the camporee I had a negative exchange with a man at the event. He had done something objectionable toward one of our scouts, and I didn't handle it as well as I would prefer. While at church, this scripture ran through my mind (Matthew 5:23-24):

23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

It is the responsibility of the person who remembers that there is a problem to take the step to fix it.

I have been out of town for a few days, and yesterday I was sitting in the airport studying some scriptural and other resources. It was Sunday, and I had spent most of the day traveling and was unable to go to church. So, I decided to spend extra time studying the Lord's teachings.

I read a talk by Howard W. Hunter, a humble servant of God. The address is: Commitment to God in the September 2006 Ensign.

In the article, he quotes this reassuring passage from Joshua:

"As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee."

“Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them” (Joshua 1:5–6).

We often feel unequal to the tasks before us, but God is generous in the help He offers. We must ask in faith and recognize that He does in fact know best. Yielding to His counsel is sometimes painful, or agonizing as Job and others discovered. When Daniel was thrown in the lion's den, he probably did not know how things would turn out. But, either eaten or spared, his faith and his courage would remain the same.

Old Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, had a signature song about  how he did things his way. I have never known Frank on a personal basis, and I do not wish to diminish his valuable contribution to pop culture etc. Also, there is a contextual basis to the song: he's singing about not letting himself be pushed around and easily influenced by others. He stood his ground and had the character to see things through.

But, the context is easily lost. And, in today's world the phrase, "If it feels good, do it" has become more than a bumper sticker chuckle. It has become something of a philosophy of life for many.

Is doing things 'Our' way really what it's about? If I followed every impulse I had and did everything just how I want to do it, I would be a lonely, hollow, selfish, wrecked human being. Rather, as I have let the Lord put me on the anvil and shape my soul, I have become a better person to those around me, and I have become happier. Contrast the self-centered person to this description of Nephi (Helaman 10:5-6):

 4 Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments. 

5 And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will.

The Book of Mormon contains many examples of people whose lives are changed through the power of Jesus Christ. One can safely say that this is at the heart of the book's purpose. In a stroke of irony, the more part of the once obedient people become wicked, and the once wayward people become obedient- at around the same time. Thus, the duality persists.

Jean-Paul Sartre, famous French existentialist writer once said, "L'enfer, c'est les autres." In English it is, "Hell is other people."

Sartre felt that the gaze of others was unbearable. It was constrained to be a judgmental and shaming gaze. He wrote a play called "Huis clos" (No Exit) wherein there are people with no eye lids- they can never stop gazing nor can they shut out the gaze of others. (I spent many years studying the existentialist writers-- very interesting stuff!)

But, as interesting as this line of inquiry is-- it is wrong. This is not the forcible condition of human kind. No- when there is widespread obedience to the commandments of God, there is peace and goodness. People put others first, put their happiness, their hunger, their thirst, their need for friendship first. As all people do this, no one is left famished or alone.

Helaman 6:3

3 Nevertheless, the people of the church did have great joy because of the conversion of the Lamanites, yea, because of the church of God, which had been established among them. And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy.

There are so many voices competing for our attention. It seems that the loudest and most shocking get the focus. God's prference is not to shout. He's not a "yeller". He prefers to deal with us the way a loving Father deals with His kids: He wants to converse, to talk things out, to get the dialog going and help us understand. I love this passage from Helaman 5:30:

 30 And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul—

Sometimes as parents, we are tempted to excuse our own tendency to yell- to raise our voices and shout down objections and expressions from our children. Doing so rarely, if ever, leads to more understanding.

While it is true that God shakes some walls as a last ditch effort to catch our attention, a consistent trait emerges from the corpus of scripture: God prefers a conversation- even though He already knows everything. He's generous that way.